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A34
life
Saturday, August 9, 2014 www.guardian.co.tt Guardian
This is a day for all those who love to read and it encourages you to
find your favorite reading place, a good book, rather it be fiction or
non-fiction, and read the day away.
The very first books used parchment or vellum (calf skin) for the
book pages, covers were made of wood and often covered with
leather. The books were fitted with clasps or straps. Public libraries
appeared in the Middle Ages and books were often chained to a book-
shelf or a desk to prevent theft.
In recent times, E-books are rapidly increasing in popularity. E-book
(electronic book) is a full length book published online. They can
usually be downloaded or bought on the internet.
JOSHUA SURTEES
In 2002, UK Guardian journalist,
Simon Rogers, interviewed the last
remaining Caribbean veteran of WWI,
George Blackman.
He died the following year in March
2003 and with him went the last living
connection to the horrors of the Great
Wa r.
Born in Barbados in 1897, Blackman
was 105 when Rogers interviewed him.
Earlier in 2002, the other remaining vet-
eran of the British West Indies Regiment
who had served in the war, Eugent Clarke
from Jamaica, had died at the ripe old
age of 108.
15,000 men from the Caribbean—
and it was just men back then, later in
WWII women enlisted too—served in
the war in Europe. A war which many
people at the time thought, or hoped,
would be over by Christmas.
Like so many young men, boys even,
Blackman lied about his age—saying he
was 18 when he was only 17—so that
he could serve England and the British
Empire. All of the colonies, from the
West Indies to Australia and India, were
enthusiastic about the war effort.
Even the black nationalist Marcus
Garvey told the men of the Caribbean
they should fight.
According to Rogers, between 1914
and 1918 “the islands donated £60m in
today’s money to the war effort—cash
they could ill afford.”
Speaking at the centenary event on
August 4 at Chaguaramas Military
Museum, the Australian ambassador to
T&T, Ross Tysoe, said his country at
the time considered itself “a proud junior
partner in the Empire,” and that the
attitude of the governors was that they
would “support Britain to the last man
and the last shilling.” Thirty eight per
cent of Australian men aged 18 to 34
enlisted, 416,809 in total. After four
years of fighting, 59,000 were dead and
166,000 badly wounded and 4,000
missing in POW camps.
The impact on the Caribbean was
less brutal as most of the men were pre-
vented from fighting because of racial
politics. But returnees after the war faced
similarly challenging circumstances
here—many came back suffering from
the effects and injuries of the conditions
of the trenches in France and Belgium
and the swamps and plains of Egypt
and Palestine. Many felt let down by
Tribute paid to WWI veterans
the British government in the way
they were treated as veterans, as
well as the reception that greeted
them back home where Caribbean
societies were in social turmoil.
“Lord Kitchener said with the
black race, he could whip the
world,” Blackman told Rogers.
It was Field Marshal Horatio Her-
bert Kitchener of Ballylongford,
County Kerry he was referring to,
not Aldwyn Roberts of Arima,
Trinidad, who no doubt would have
said the same thing.
But despite his public utterances,
Kitchener, Secretary of State for
War in 1914, had reservations about
black soldiers fighting on the front
line with whites.
It was only when the staggering
losses became apparent that black
Caribbean soldiers were sent to
fight in 1915. Prior to that, their
jobs in the trenches had been tough,
menial tasks, like digging the
trenches.
“When you go home, tell them
of us and say ‘for your tomorrow,
we gave our today,’” said Major
General Kenrick Maharaj in his
speech at the symposium on the
war’s effects on the Caribbean.
The words are inscribed at the
Allied War Cemetery in Kohima,
India. Maharaj said they were par-
ticularly relevant today when, “our
society needs to engage a new dia-
logue on national identity, national
purpose and national vision.”
He alluded to the social upheaval
which met the returning service-
men in 1919 in Trinidad, St Lucia,
Grenada, Barbados, Antigua,
Jamaica and British Guiana, where
violent strikes and protests were
taking place as a result of severe
economic hardship, largely caused
by the cost of the war.
He referred to historian Michael
Anthony’s History of T&T in the
20th Century Vol 1 in which Antho-
ny asserts that “the biggest direct
impact on Trinidad caused by the
1914-1918 war was the return of
the five public contingents of sol-
diers from the front.”
“It has been seen that the sol-
diers—bitterly disappointed, irate,
even enraged—had already been
causing serious tension.”
The protests, which soldiers
actively participated in, formed the
basis of the Labour movement led
by Grenadian-born Tubal Uriah
Butler in the years between then
and the Second World War.
Before Maharaj’s speech, past
members of the T&T armed forces
stood as the military brass band
played a moving rendition of the
national anthem.
Dignitaries from the embassies
of Britain, Germany, USA, Australia
and Venezuela all spoke, before Rear
Admiral Richard Kelshall gave an
essay on the Navy in WWI.
Linda Kelshall, co-founder of the
museum with her husband, retired
Lieutenant Commander Gaylord
Kelshall, spoke about the respect
today’s generation ought to have
for the men and women who served
in both world wars.
Later, they watched as younger
family members acted a drama skit
called After The Battle, recreating
the conditions in the trenches while
the war song, Pack Up Your Trou-
bles In Your Old Kit Bag And Smile,
Smile, Smile, played out.
Sixteen million people died in
the conflict which, though sense-
less, triggered enormous geo-polit-
ical changes which shaped the 20th
Century.
Master of ceremonies, the actor
Nigel Scott, reflected on the futility
of war in a quote acrredited to the
Duke of Wellington after the Battle
of Waterloo, “Next to a battle lost,
the saddest thing is a battle won.”
Natasha Harris, Matthew, Joshua and Mattaus Ali perform a skit After The
Battle at the Chaguaramas Military Museum grounds.
PHOTO: MARYANN AUGUSTE